The blackness of the night surrounds me

Recently I have been forced to witness as someone I know, self-destructs. The person has decided to refuse to admit mistakes, perhaps the magnitude of the folly is too much. And instead of seeking wise counsel, Pride disguised as genteel stoic self-respect prevents this. What is so laughable is that the person is so concerned with minuscule matters, and totally ignores the larger issue. Any form of human argument or gentle persuasion fails. Pride is an unassailable stronghold. I don't know how to help this person except to pray and despair.

Is the arm of the Lord too short to save? No. But will he help the proud and stubborn of heart?

In this blackness, I turn to music for solace.

This is one of my favorites. Hoodoo by Urna Chahartugchi. I think Hoodoo in Mongolian means the Steppes/Countryside.

I do not understand the words but I receive resonance from its emotion. The young female singer sings this with such poignanance.

I imagine myself somewhere out there - on the Mongolian steppes - lost in the blackness of the night, alone. Looking up at the stars, I feel so fragile, yet so alive.

You can listen to it here:

http://ymchiam.multiply.com/music/item/20/

A Princess' Tale - for Aila

(I thought up this story recently)

A long time ago there was a beautiful princess named Aila who lived in a desert land. It was hot and dry like all desert lands. Occasionally it would rain and the strange and wonderful desert flowers would bloom. Those were the happiest times for her. But they were few and far between.

She longed for a green land, a land where rain would fall often, ... not too much though. Her cousin was nearly drowned in such a deluge. :)

She wanted to be in a land filled with summer flowers and autumn trees. A land where the roads were lined with Cherry Blossom trees in constant bloom. A land with the tall African Plain trees with their wide shady branches. A place where she could walk through endless fields of golden wheat and travel across vast plains of green grass like a ship crossing the sea.

One day a dreadful demon in the guise of a whirlwind passed over her land and drank up all the water. Everything turned to dust. There was little to begin with and once he had finished there was even less.

The Princess stayed in her castle, its stone walls protecting her safe from the demon. But she knew she could not stay. At night, when the air was cool once again and the beast was asleep, she made her escape.

She walked through the night, guided by star light,
In the cold comfort of the dark, she found respite
As the slumbering sun awoke, under rocks she would hide
She dared not linger under Ra's scorching might

... to be continued...

The causes of prosperity and peace

The poverty that we see around the world in places like Zimbabwe, the chaos in South Africa, the corrupt mismanagement in Burma is actually the way things are suppose to be.

Humans are naturally inclined to self-preservation and self-centered tendencies. To take care of your own kind. To take care of your children. To take care of your family/friends/clan/ethnic group etc.. This has been the way since time immemorial. This is the reason why there are wars. This is the reason why nations break apart and have civil wars.  

In short, humans are selfish. In their natural state, they will steal from their neighbors, they will tax strangers, they will swindle foreigners.

Attempts at trying to create a utopia like the Communist System have failed miserably ever since the stupid French Revolution of 1789. Get this: the French overthrew their King and in the end, after a murderous period of civil genocide, replaced him with a Corsican dicatator who embarked on a bloody war to promote the ideas of the French Revolution. One way Napoleon effected this was by removing heads of state and replacing them with his own relatives. How utterly fubar.

Humans never learn though. And so the Soviet Russians started a Revolution and put a Georgian - Stalin - in charge who murdered over 20 million Russians in prison camps and caused twice as much damage through mismanagement. And we all know about Chairman Mao, Pol Pot and stupid Castro.

The Revolutionaries struggled against oppression and for free speech, dissent etc.. And in the end, when they got into power, they were many times worse than original rulers.

The triumph of the Western System is the

“The appalling poverty of Sri Lanka or Mozambique is not some bizarre aberration that can be tracked to a cause we can cure. We are the aberration; Sri Lanka and Mozambique are the normal state of human history.”

Judging by the comments, many did not get her point at all.

Many people do not understand what is a “normal” state — i.e., one that requires no special explanation — and what is “abnormal.” We tend to look at our immediate environment, both in terms of space and time, and declare that environment the normal baseline for the rest of humanity. Many people in the developed world tend to think that the attributes of the developed world we take for granted, such as the rule of law, political equality, democracy, material abundance and long episodes of peace are the normal baseline for human existence. They look at the material poverty and political oppression in the developing world and ask, “What’s abnormal there that they lack the attributes that we have?”

The sad truth is that nothing is “abnormal” in the developing world. Rather, it is the developing world that is the normal baseline for humanity.

If one were to compare the greatest pre-industrial civilizations of any time or place to the standards of the developed world, every one of them would look like a squalid, third-world hellhole. The great civilizations of the past are regarded as “great” because of how they compared to the surrounding peoples of their times, not because of how they measured up on some absolute scale of social, political and economic development. An average citizen of the Roman Republic or Tang China had a better life than those who lived outside the boundaries of their respective societies, but compared to even the poorest person in the developed world today, their lives were a horror.

Whether one looked at ancient Rome, China, Japan, the Caliphate, medieval Europe, meso-America, etc., one would see societies where the vast majority of the population lived in dire material poverty and where political power rested in the hands of a narrow and usually hereditary elite. Staggering human rights abuses like slavery and execution by torture were common practices everywhere. Justice was largely dependent on patronage and class. Mass education did not exist. Work was physically demanding, tedious and continous. Wars, plagues and famine were common, and every generation could expect to experience at least one of the three if not all three in concert. Uncivilized peoples faired even worse.

Medieval Europe was every bit as poor and cruel as the worst areas of the present day world. It was no better than, and in some ways worse, than the civilizations of its contemporaries. However, starting with the Renaissance something in Europe changed. Europe began to diverge from the “normal” human experience. Political power began to devolve to the masses. Commerce grew and with it rising material standards of living. Knowledge of the material world exploded. In the span of three-hundred years (a time span of one Chinese dynasty or a third of a Pharaohic one) European civilization became something never seen before.

It is easy to see that poverty and oppression in the nations of the developing world occur in direct proportion to the degree in which those nations’ social, political and economic systems diverge from the Western model. The Japanese succeeded by the widespread adoption of Western ideas. Their greatest disaster befell them when they tried to resurrect pre-industrial Japanese ideals in the modern context. The degree to which former colonies of the West maintained the political and legal institutions left by colonizers largely predicts their current level of prosperity and freedom. Places that were never colonized and which have no legacy of western institutions at all are even worse off.

Had the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution never occurred in Europe, the non-western world be even worse off than it is today. They would have all the material poverty and political oppression they have always had without any of the amelioration (such as vaccines and other medicines) offered by the existence of the West. People who think otherwise are engaged in childish romanticism.

It is the western divergence from the norms of poverty and oppression that requires explanation, not the continuance of poverty and oppression in most of the non-western world. Unfortunately, this idea creates uncomfortable questions for many. The elites of many lands refuse to accept responsibility for the fate of their peoples, preferring instead to blame outsiders. Leftists within the West, as a matter of religious faith, reject any idea that the West has any better ideas or methods than the rest of the world. As a result, Leftists and kleptocrats become de facto allies fighting against the progress and development of 3rd-world peoples.

We will not make much headway until we get enough people to stop asking what is “wrong” with the developing world and instead ask what is “right” with the developed world. Just as it is better to stop asking, “What causes wars?” and instead to ask, “What causes peace?” it is better to stop asking, “What causes poverty and oppression?” and to start asking, “What cause prosperity and freedom?” Before we can move forward must explain the positive aberration that is the West.

Man killed by mobile phone explosion - battery suspect

Memo to self- Don't buy substitute batteries

From Times Online

A man has died after his mobile phone exploded, severing a major artery in his neck, according to reports.

The man, thought to be a shop assistant in his twenties at a computer shop in Guangzhou, China, died after he put a new battery in his phone. It was believed that he may have just finished charging the battery and had put the phone in his breast pocket when it exploded.

According to the local Chinese daily Shin Min Daily News, the accident happened on January 30 at 7.30pm. An employee at the shop told Chinese media that she heard a loud bang and saw her colleague lying on the floor of the shop in a pool of blood. The employee said the victim had recently changed the battery in his mobile phone.

Chinese authorities have yet to determine the make and model of the phone and its battery. Some reports indicated the store was a Lenovo shop, but it was thought that this might be because the shop advertised Lenovo computer products. Police were investigating whether the phone and battery were counterfeit. 

Some other pointers:

- Always use original batteries. Be sure that batteries by the manufacturer are meant for your mobile phone.

- Never modify your phone

- Always use original battery chargers

- Do not expose your mobile phone to high temperatures, and avoid exposing it to direct sunlight

- Avoid long phone conversations

- Do not make or answer calls when the phone is charging

- Try to keep your phone in a bag instead of in a pocket

- Do not use damaged batteries

I hate it when it doesn't rain

I hate it. It hasn't rained in over a month. The temperature was super hot this week - reaching over 40C in a straight week- a number of people died as a result. Mostly old people trapped in their homes by the heat. It didn't help that the State Govt decided to cut off power to half of Victoria to prevent the electricity grid from melting down. Morons had over 10 full years of prosperity - and the incompetent bastards lost all the cash and yet the morons get voted back into power. So ... sad.

Thankfully we have a cool breeze/change coming in. The temperature has finally gone below 28C. I'm playing Vangalis' album Soil Festivals - its a beautiful piece of music written to celebrate a thunderstorm.

I didn't go to church again. I don't think I've been to church for awhile. Frankly I find it a depressing experience going to church. Its like going to a carnival these days. The preacher(s) will swagger around the stage and do their half-baked stand up routine. And then you get all these jokers who want to use the pulpit to "share" but drone on and on. (And they wonder why the church numbers are falling off). Can't we bring back public stoning for false prophets?

Why can't churches be a holy place? We go there - we worship God collectively. We hear a meaningful sermon - and if there is no meaningful sermon - we hear a reading of God's word - then we pray - sing the doxology and go home.

Well I guess my version of a holy place differs from most people.

I used to enjoy going to St. Paul's Cathedral or St Marks and hearing the choir sing, listening to mass. I should do that next week.

14 more days before I go back to Singapore.

I hate it when it doesn't rain

I hate drought. It hasn't rained in over a month or more. The temperature was super hot this week - reaching over 40C in a straight week- a number of people died as a result. Mostly old people trapped in their homes by the heat. It didn't help that the State Govt decided to cut off power to half of Victoria to prevent the electricity grid from melting down. Morons had over 10 full years of prosperity - and the incompetent Labor bastards alway end up screwing the economy up.
Thankfully we have a cool breeze/change coming in. The temperature has finally gone below 28C. I'm playing Vangalis' album Soil Festivals - its a beautiful piece of music written to celebrate a thunderstorm. They incorporate the sound of rainfall into the music; what a strange experience - listening to the sound of rain played on an MP3 player.

I didn't go to church again. I don't think I've been to church for awhile. Frankly I find it a depressing experience going to church. Its like going to a carnival. The preacher will swagger around the stage and do a half-baked comedian stand up routine. And then you get all these jokers who want to use the pulpit to "share" but want to do their version of Jimmy Swaggert and drone on and on. (And they wonder why the church numbers are falling off).

Vanity. Vanity. They love the sound of their own voices too much.

Can't we bring back public stoning for false prophets?

Why can't churches be a holy place? We go there - we worship God collectively. We hear a meaningful sermon - and if there is no meaningful sermon - we hear a reading of God's word - then we pray - sing the doxology and go home.

Well I guess my version of a holy place differs from most people.

I used to enjoy going to St. Paul's Cathedral or St Marks and hearing the choir sing, listening to mass. I should do that next week.

14 more days before I go back to Singapore.

I hate it when it doesn't rain

I hate it. It hasn't rained in over a month. The temperature was super hot this week - reaching over 40C in a straight week- a number of people died as a result. Mostly old people trapped in their homes by the heat. It didn't help that the State Govt decided to cut off power to half of Victoria to prevent the electricity grid from melting down. Morons had over 10 full years of prosperity - and the incompetent bastards lost all the cash and yet the morons get voted back into power. So ... sad.

Thankfully we have a cool breeze/change coming in. The temperature has finally gone below 28C. I'm playing Vangalis' album Soil Festivals - its a beautiful piece of music written to celebrate a thunderstorm.

I didn't go to church again. I don't think I've been to church for awhile. Frankly I find it a depressing experience going to church. Its like going to a carnival these days. The preacher(s) will swagger around the stage and do their half-baked stand up routine. And then you get all these jokers who want to use the pulpit to "share" but drone on and on. (And they wonder why the church numbers are falling off). Can't we bring back public stoning for false prophets?

Why can't churches be a holy place? We go there - we worship God collectively. We hear a meaningful sermon - and if there is no meaningful sermon - we hear a reading of God's word - then we pray - sing the doxology and go home.

Well I guess my version of a holy place differs from most people.

I used to enjoy going to St. Paul's Cathedral or St Marks and hearing the choir sing, listening to mass. I should do that next week.

14 more days before I go back to Singapore.